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Re: What Type of Health Care?

Single-payer national health care.

It is crazy to me that huge numbers of people in this country can go sick without care. Corporations (especially the insurance industry) shouldn't be able to make a profit on the backs of the sick or injured.

The for-profit health care system is also giving our companies a competitive disadvantage over companies from Japan and elsewhere. Just look at the auto industry.

Re: What Type of Health Care?

The for-profit health care system is also giving our companies a competitive disadvantage over companies from Japan and elsewhere. Just look at the auto industry.

Sorry, that really made me laugh.

“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.”

Re: What Type of Health Care?

Published: September 25, 2007
President Bush accused Congressional Democrats of putting health coverage for poor children at risk by forcing him to veto a bill that he says is a dangerous step toward government-run health care. The opposite is the case. Mr. Bush is the one putting the health of America’s children at risk, threatening to veto carefully crafted legislation that would reauthorize and expand the valuable State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-chip.
We can only hope that fair-minded members of Congress will pass the compromise measure by veto-proof majorities this week. Otherwise, millions of low- and middle-income children would be denied access to a program that has played a critical role in reducing the number of uninsured children over the past decade.
To hear the president tell it, he has long supported the joint federal-state program, and his budget for fiscal year 2008 proposes an additional $5 billion in federal funds spread over the next five years, a 20 percent increase over current levels. What he doesn’t say is that this paltry sum is not even enough to provide continued coverage for all of the children who are currently enrolled, let alone enroll millions more of the uninsured.
A compromise bill approved in recent days by Congressional leaders would boost the funding by $35 billion over the next five years, enough to enroll several million more children above the 6.6 million already participating. The bill deserves wide support. This is by no means a measure designed to score political advantage, as Mr. Bush contends. The compromise retreats from a partisan bill fashioned by House Democrats and largely mirrors legislation crafted by prominent members of both parties in the Senate and approved by a large bipartisan majority, enough to overcome a veto, in that chamber.
It diverges from the Senate bill primarily by overturning a new set of arbitrary, overly stringent rules imposed by the administration to prevent states from providing S-chip coverage to middle-income children, those whose family income exceeds 250 percent of the poverty level. The administration contends that expanded coverage would cause middle-class parents to drop private health insurance for their children and switch to the government program, saddling taxpayers with the bill.
That may happen to some extent, but many middle-class families clearly need help in the wake of cutbacks in employer health benefits. A recent analysis of census data by Urban Institute researchers found that the number of uninsured children jumped by a startling 710,000 last year. Almost half of the increase was in families with incomes between 200 percent and 399 percent of poverty — the very group the administration seems to believe is adequately insured and has no need of S-chip. The compromise bill gives states needed time and assistance to devise the best ways to insure these middle-income people without disrupting private coverage. Meanwhile, the first priority would be to enroll more of the poor.
Divisive provisions that were rammed through the House by Democrats, involving Medicare reforms, have been dropped. All members of Congress now need to let Mr. Bush know that he is the one playing politics with the health of America’s children and then pass this legislation with a veto-proof majority.

Re: What Type of Health Care?

Options:

1)Single-payer, government-operated, tax-funded system
2) Play-or-pay plan, employers would be required either to provide health insurance for all workers or to pay a tax that would fund health insurance for those who remain uninsured
3) Changing our insurance laws to reduce insurance costs or make insurance more available to more people
4) Managed Health Care Plans - a national system of Health Insurance Purchasing Cooperatives (HIPCs), which would act as collective purchasing agents on behalf of employers and individuals
5) Change the tax treatment
6) Medical IRAs
7) Heritage Foundation Plan-require every American to enroll in a health care program, tax credits would be issued to purchase the plans, no more corporate deductibility of insurance premiums
8) Goodman-Musgrave Plan

Industry-watchers speculate that GM spends more money per-car on employee health care than on steel. America's growing health-care crisis makes it more expensive to hire an American worker than a similarly-paid worker in any of the industrialized countries with national health insurance.

Re: What Type of Health Care?

Originally Posted by Incyte

Sorry, that really made me laugh.

Why laugh? It's true. Paying for health care of employees is hurting the competitiveness of companies across the US, especially when they compete directly with companies whose employees have national health care, which is just about every other industrialized nation.

Re: What Type of Health Care?

You may have found association, but not causation. Maybe GM is losing its competitiveness because the cars it produces aren't as good? But it is easy to blame it on health insurance costs.

And this single payer system will help in what way? Might it not simply shift the costs to the employees (through higher taxes)? In which case GM would likely have to pay their employees more or else they will lose purchasing power.

Re: What Type of Health Care?

Originally Posted by bawbie

Single-payer national health care.

It is crazy to me that huge numbers of people in this country can go sick without care. Corporations (especially the insurance industry) shouldn't be able to make a profit on the backs of the sick or injured.

The for-profit health care system is also giving our companies a competitive disadvantage over companies from Japan and elsewhere. Just look at the auto industry.

A single-payer national health care system would come at enormous cost to American taxpayers. Some economists put the cost as high as $339 billion per year in additional taxes.
For all that tax money, we would buy surprisingly little health care. The one common characteristic of all national health care systems is a shortage of services. For example, in Great Britain, a country with a population of only 55 million, more than 800,000 patients are waiting for surgery.In New Zealand, a country with a population of just 3 million, the surgery waiting list now exceeds 50,000. In Sweden the wait for heart x-rays is more than 11 months. Heart surgery can take an additional 8 months. In Canada the wait for hip replacement surgery is nearly 10 months; for a mammogram, 2.5 months; for a pap smear, 5 months. Surgeons in Canada report that, for heart patients, the danger of dying on the waiting list now exceeds the danger of dying on the operating table. According to Alice Baumgart, president of the Canadian Nurses Association, emergency rooms are so overcrowded that patients awaiting treatment frequently line the corridors.

Re: What Type of Health Care?

Originally Posted by bawbie

Why laugh? It's true. Paying for health care of employees is hurting the competitiveness of companies across the US, especially when they compete directly with companies whose employees have national health care, which is just about every other industrialized nation.

Re: What Type of Health Care?

You may have found association, but not causation. Maybe GM is losing its competitiveness because the cars it produces aren't as good? But it is easy to blame it on health insurance costs.

So company A spending x dollars/employee on health care and company B spending x*10 dollars/employee on health care isn't a competitive disadvantage? How so?

And this single payer system will help in what way? Might it not simply shift the costs to the employees (through higher taxes)? In which case GM would likely have to pay their employees more or else they will lose purchasing power.

I seriously doubt anyone at GM other than the top executives would get raises at a rate of >10% per year, which is the current rate health costs are increasing. A single payer system would provide stability for the companies to forecast future expenditures, even if pay increases are needed.

Also any pay increases wouldn't come close to the amount GM is currently paying current & former employees for health care. The retirees health care coverage for companies like GM is astronomical.

Re: What Type of Health Care?

Originally Posted by alaskaguy

A single-payer national health care system would come at enormous cost to American taxpayers. Some economists put the cost as high as $339 billion per year in additional taxes.
For all that tax money, we would buy surprisingly little health care. The one common characteristic of all national health care systems is a shortage of services. For example, in Great Britain, a country with a population of only 55 million, more than 800,000 patients are waiting for surgery.In New Zealand, a country with a population of just 3 million, the surgery waiting list now exceeds 50,000. In Sweden the wait for heart x-rays is more than 11 months. Heart surgery can take an additional 8 months. In Canada the wait for hip replacement surgery is nearly 10 months; for a mammogram, 2.5 months; for a pap smear, 5 months. Surgeons in Canada report that, for heart patients, the danger of dying on the waiting list now exceeds the danger of dying on the operating table. According to Alice Baumgart, president of the Canadian Nurses Association, emergency rooms are so overcrowded that patients awaiting treatment frequently line the corridors.

Where are you getting this data from? A source for numbers like that would be nice.

And have you been to an emergency room here recently? They often have lines in the corridors, because people without insurance usually wait until it's an emergency to go to the hospital.

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